India Reacts: Stripping of schoolkid a national shame

People from across the nation write in to IBNLive, expressing outrage and shock.

New Delhi: The entire nation reacted with outrage and indignation to the shocking incident in which a seven-year-old girl was made to strip by her teacher in front of her classmates and mocked at in a West Delhi school on Friday.

While the 20-year-old teacher of the privately-run Star Shine Public School in Uttam Nagar has obtained bail in a case for outraging the modesty of the girl, the victim, Rakhi is still living with the trauma of the shocking incident.

"First she made me take off my clothes, made me stand on the chair and made the class clap. Then she tied me with a rope and attempted to drag me around. But I held on to the chair," a traumatised Rakhi later said.

The girl was meted out with this 'punishment' because she had not done her homework that day. Today, she dread the very idea of going to school.

"It is a heinous act by a pedagogue. She should be punished severely for this," says Raju. He believes the school also has an equal share of blame in the case. "It's clearly a negligence on the part of the school management, who don't care about qualification of teachers and children's psychology," he points out.

Praveeen, another IBNLive reader, reacted with disbelief. "I don't know why teachers act so stupidly. In my view, the teacher should be put behind bars for at least a week so that no other dares to do such thing again."

Tarakad Raman doesn't think the Delhi Government's move to officially probe the incident will yield any positive result. "What is required is action, not just probe. A probe is not guaranteed to yield any useful results."

PT Raghuraman says the teacher needs to be sent for counseling by experts in this field. "Educate the teacher first. Make the school management understand that they should have the right person for the job," he says.

According to Prasanna, the incident "clearly shows how ill the teacher was trained to teach children. Is this what a child should learn at a young age when people like former president Abdul Kalam always had a 'great vision" for the children of modern India?" he asks.

He demands that the teacher should never be allowed to teach again in any school in the rest of her life. "If she has a license/degree to teach, that should be cancelled immediately. She should also spend a few months in prison to learn a lesson."

Aruna has expressed sympathy for the child. "This child is going to be scarred for life. The teacher who made her strip should be blacklisted and never allowed to step into academia again. Such a shameful and degrading form of punishment towards a little child should not be let off," she demands.

Shekhar wrote in to express shock and disbelief over "such a heinous mentality on a teacher's part. How can an individual, who has taken the role of building up a child's future, break it herself in such a callous manner?"

Ashok calls it a "shame for the entire nation." While Shubhdarshani Mitra wonders "what makes these teachers behave so irresponsibly considering that they are the ones who are supposed to help form the basis of the society by acting as 'gurus' to the kids! "But then you cannot expect much wisdom from a 20-year-old girl who should have been in college herself. Maybe it's a lesson for the schoo authorities to hire the right kind of people for these jobs."

Anoop calls it "a barbaric and sadistic act done by a young women teacher on a girl child! The civil society must take this as an alarm and deliberate on concrete actions to prevent such unfortunate events."

Boomirajan has urged the Ministry of Education to immediately issue strict guidelines on what sort of punishment to be given for defaulters in schools.

Prasanna calls for a sound professional counseling session for the child to get over the trauma. "The poor little kid would be silently replaying the black Friday incident in her mind and living with shame, having sleepless nights and nightmares."